Russia’s Wagner Group pivots to European sabotage, say western officials

Recruiters and propagandists who previously worked for Russia's Wagner Group have emerged as a main conduit for Kremlin-organised sabotage attacks in Europe, according to western intelligence officials.

The fighter group's status has been uncertain since a failed rebellion against the top brass of the Russian army in June 2023 prompted a clampdown and the death of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin. But Wagner recruiters who specialised in persuading young men from Russia's hinterland to fight in Ukraine have been given a new task: recruiting economically vulnerable Europeans to carry out violence on Nato soil, the officials said.

Moscow spy chiefs' deployments of covert agents in Europe have been much depleted after rounds of diplomatic expulsions by EU capitals, and so they have turned increasingly to proxies to do their bidding. Russia's military intelligence agency (GRU) "is using the talent it has got available to it", said one western intelligence official, referring to the Wagner network.

The GRU and Russia's domestic intelligence agency (FSB) have both become highly active in seeking to recruit "disposable" agents in Europe to sow chaos. In the past two years, the Kremlin has expanded a campaign of disruption and sabotage across Europe aimed at weakening the resolve of western powers in their support for Ukraine and at sowing social unrest.

For the GRU, the Wagner network has proved a particularly effective — if crude — tool to do so, senior European intelligence officials told the FT. Agents have been tasked by Wagner operatives with everything from arson attacks against politicians' cars and warehouses containing aid for Ukraine to posing as Nazi propagandists.

Typically, those recruited do so for money and are often marginalised individuals, sometimes lacking purpose or direction. Wagner had a ready-built network of propagandists and recruiters who "speak their language", said one European official.

Russia's intelligence agencies typically seek to put at least two layers between themselves and agents they ask to do their bidding, the official said. "They want some degree of deniability… Wagner and the individuals that were part of it… have a long and close relationship working for the GRU in this way."

The FSB has tended to turn to criminal and diaspora networks but these have been less effective in recruiting en masse, they added.

Wagner and its supporters already had a significant online output on social media channels aimed at Russians, which has been parlayed with relative ease into a more international effort. Telegram channels in particular have been surprisingly slick and adept in how they have pitched themselves, a second European official said. "They know their audience," they said.

Prigozhin was also responsible for running the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, the most widely known Russian troll farm, which began targeting western audiences with disinformation well over a decade ago.

Security authorities have at least one advantage: what Russia's spy chiefs gain in scale and cost by using proxies such as Wagner they lose in competence and secrecy. More attacks have been thwarted than have succeeded.